


with all the careless high-stepping grace

by ashleykay



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death, F/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 20:42:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleykay/pseuds/ashleykay
Summary: Gilbert deals with death and sorrow and finding out what the world holds for him. Anne helps along the way.A sequel of sorts to we passed the fields of grazing grain.





	with all the careless high-stepping grace

**Author's Note:**

> Titles come from "The Dance of Death" by Charles Baudelaire  
> Verse from the Bible Revelation 21:4

i. **the feast of life**

 

Gilbert Blythe was born from a dead mother and a grieving father. He had not know in the beginning. It was a whispered thing, something spoken about in hushed grave tones. His Aunts had looked side long at him, with a shake of their heads. He had known that he was different. That others had mother's, some soft hearted creatures that sang sweet songs. Some had mother's with harsh eyes and large plump bodies that seemed hard for all their roundness. But Gilbert Blythe had none. There was his father, of course, sturdy and strong and in the night, when Gilbert was afraid, his father was as soft as anyone's mother.

 

John Blythe sang deeply in a timber that rumbled the room, but it was comforting to Gilbert, that rough voice singing of the sea, of far off places. Of dreams that he could not quite remember.

 

It was when Gilbert was a scrawny leggy six that he learned some of the truth. He had noticed, for the first time, his mother's picture sitting as a vigil on his father's bedside table. Her light airy face, a sweet little smile that turned a gentle curve to her lips. She had his mouth. Or he had hers. He saw for that moment, for the first moment, that he had come from something other than his father. A part of him, a part of someone he did not know, looked at him in the mirror from then on.

 

That night, as his father helped him curl into his little bed, he asked, who she was. Why she had his mouth and had wanted but did not ask why he felt as if he knew her when he was sure he had never met that woman before.

 

His father's eyes had grown dark and seemed heavy in the lamp light. “She is your Mother.” John's voice was rough but kind.

 

“I didn't know I had one.” Gilbert's eyes squinted towards the towering man. “Where is she?” And if Gilbert had been looking then, had understood in all his six year old self, he would have seen the tears at the corner of John's eyes. Would have seen the shudder and the memory of that long mysterious mother cross his father's eyes. But Gilbert was six and tired and had never know that such a person existed or once was a living thing that was gone and he, Gilbert himself, was the smoke that curled after the candled had been snuffed.

 

“She has gone to Heaven.” Gilbert knew of Heaven only what the church had told him. Which was only a small thing in comparison to the violent talks of sin and Hell that was crashed upon him most Sundays.

 

Heaven felt like a vague place, like looking from the tops of trees out into the woods, the shadowy horizon, that was to far away to be understood.

 

So he felt it important to ask, “Why?”

 

And here, Gilbert did notice the tears.

 

“The Lord asked her to.”

 

It was not an answer but his father never cried, had only seemed to be made of three things: tiredness, happiness and work.

 

And as far as Gilbert understood none of them had made his father cry. But the lady in the picture, his mother, did.

 

So Gilbert swallowed down his questions, it made his chest burn, thinking of his father weeping. So he gave his father a smile, small and careful. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Gilbert said because he had heard the ladies at church say it while sweeping their fingers over the sad and hurt parishioners on the church steps.

 

It brought only the barest smile to his father's face.

 

That night there was no singing. There was no lullabies about the sea.

 

There was a tight feeling in Gilbert's chest, a feeling that he could not pin down, not with all his six years of living did he have a word for the sickness rolling in his belly.

 

It would be his Aunt Rebecca who would tell him the awful part. He had been nine and a day, when she had plodded down to the Orchard from some city far away. She smelled of sweet wine and tobacco. It made Gilbert's nose itch. But he had on his best clothes and was sitting straight against the chair.

 

“Are you in school, yet, boy?” Her voice was cracked and aged, even though she must have been young.

 

Gilbert nodded, “Yes, Ma'am.”

 

“How would you like to go to a real school. One filled with other boys?”

 

He scrunched up his nose and chanced a look at his father, who's face was grim and pointed, “Well, I have boys in my school now. And they are fine.”

 

Aunt Rebecca humphed. “What will you learn here, in such a small school? Your mother, my sweet sister, may God bless her soul, would have wanted you to be something more that this.”

 

Gilbert did not like the way she said 'this' as if it was something dirty. Something bad, there was nothing wrong with where he lived. Nothing wrong about his room or the kitchen, about the orchard outside or the long way to school. Even if he dreamed of adventure and far off places, Avonlea was still home.

 

“Rebecca, enough.” Gilbert had never heard his father's voice like that. He sat up straighter. Tried hard not to itch his leg through the stiff formal pants.

 

“John-”

 

“No, Esther had made up her mind, she choose this life with me. And she had no problem with the way or where we lived.”

 

Here it was Rebecca that glared. “And look at where it got her. Dead, that's what. You bringing her here with no good doctors and leaving her to die while bringing your child into the world. I told her you would be no good for her-”  
  


Gilbert sucked in air. His head swam, she had died bringing him in. She had died for him.

 

“Rebecca!” John had jumped from his seat and moved towards Gilbert's aunt. But it was to late, the thing about knowing is that there is never away to remove it, to leave it behind you again.

 

Knowledge they said was power, but it was also a weapon.

 

“You never told the boy?” Rebecca's face grew red and puffed. “My sister died. To bring him here. To give him life. And you never told him. Does he know nothing?”

 

Gilbert did know something but it was so little when compared to the truth.

 

“I have had enough, his name is Gilbert, not boy, not him, Gilbert. You do not get to come into my home after nine years and demand anything.” It was now his father's face getting red. And Gilbert was the rope in the tug of war game they were playing.

 

“How could I stand to look at you. To look at him?” She jutted her finger towards Gilbert. 'She's dead because of you. You know what the doctor himself had said. No children. But that wasn't good enough for you. And was it worth it. A baby for a wife?” Rebecca's voice was wobbly and it sounded as if she had something stuck in her that she needed to cough up.

 

“Esther choose to have a baby. She wanted it, even knowing the risks. She wanted Gilbert. She named him. She wante-” The tears that John must have been holding back since Gilbert's question so long ago broke free. “You can't understand. A son or a wife. They mean so much. To you a sister and to me a wife and a friend and a love and she wanted a child so much. And then she was going to have one. And what could I do? What, Rebecca? I hoped, I hoped for the best, hoped she would live. Do you think it has been easy for Gilbert or me, without her here? I could not choose. So God did. And that was enough for Esther.”

 

“Well it will never be enough for me.” Rebecca said at last. She spared Gilbert no glance. “I came because for Esther I was willing to try and give her son a better chance than you and your farm and your small little town could. But I can see that he is more you, than her.” She turned her nose pointed up and walked out the door.

 

And there Gilbert sat. Watching her leave, knowing then, with no way of unknowning, that he was born from a dying woman.

 

That without meaning to or wanting to, he had caused suffering and death from his first moment.

 

And he could never forget it.

 

 

  1. **the sateless wandering serpent curls and glides**




 

 

His father's heart and lungs started to fail after his eleventh birthday. His father, so large and strong, seemed to weaken within days. John took to bed and wheezed and coughed and stared so long at that picture of Esther, that for years after the strongest memory that Gilbert had of him was the tableau John made, like a painting of his dying and his mourning all in one.

 

Now at night it was Gilbert who talked low and even to his father, reading John's favorite poems and scriptures. It was Gilbert who spoke of the far off places. Places he had never been but places he imagined all the same. Ones from books and maps and old stories he remembered his father telling him about.

 

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death.” It was here that Gilbert's voice cracked and broke for the first time. As his father laying wilting in bed, Gilbert grew. It felt that it was only in death that he could ever change.

 

Later, when John is weary and tired and Dr. Ward had exhausted all his remedies, Gilbert and his father leave Avonlea.

 

“I want you to see the world, Gilbert. To make the choice. To stay or to go. This farm, it isn't family. It isn't a burden. It is a choice.” John looked at him from the small low bed. His chilled fingers curling around Gilbert's smaller warmer ones. “I want more for you than an obligation.” John coughed and Gilbert flinched. His father's smile was wane and old. “I want to give you everything.”

 

And that made Gilbert flinch. Almost recoil in terror. He did not want that. Didn't want everything. Didn't really want a choice. He wanted to be small, to not know. To be cared for, instead of doing the caring.

 

He was thirteen now, but he was almost completely grown.

 

Here so far away from home, from their orchard and his Avonlea he felt lost and lonely. But still he held his father's hand. And still he lived.

 

By the time he is fourteen he has made his way back. His father still sick and worn. But their old house was coming in the distance.

 

“I want you to go back to school when we get settled.” John hadn't looked at him when he spoke.

 

“I think I should st-”

 

“I know I am sick, but I am still the head of the house for awhile yet. I say, go to school. It won't do for you to fall to far behind.”

 And what could he say.

And then there just before them is home.

 

Two days later he is walking the long path to school, he hears the tenor of Billy's voice, the soft sound of something smaller and scared. He picks up his pace.

 

The world shifts again in the eyes of Anne. Like the whisper of old oily snake she tempts him, she calls to him.

 

The world, she seemed to say, will be made new with you and I.

 

And it is.

 

It is new.

 

  1. **i fear lest you find**




 

It takes time for Anne to come to him. His pursuit of her thwarted by dibs and girls and her own fear. But she plead her sorrow and without thinking he forgave her. Because of those eyes. There was something in them he recognized. A whisper of dying and sadness.

 

A clear picture of grief.

 

She was a mirror of his heart. Of his dreams.

 

So the time it took her to come, to look up at him, it is worth it.

 

For now they walk the school distance together, mostly in silence. Sometimes with bits of stories she is writing. She asks him to call her Princess Cordelia. But he can't, she could never be such a name to him. She will always be his Anne-Girl. The little carrot girl that took him a lifetime to find.

 

To him she would always be Queen Anne.

 

She had huffed as he told her that. “But Anne is so ordinary. I wish to be something else.”

 

He wants to tell her she already is. That she could never be ordinary, to be mundane or tame. She is wild and free. But the words get stuck in his throat. The seem to big to share with her now. She is not ready, he thinks fiercely, not yet. But someday he thinks, someday she'll know.

 

Then there is Tuesday, and another one and then another.

 

His father sicker, his father dead. His father buried and gone.

 

But then. Then. There is Anne. Extraordinary Anne. Who knows what to say. Or more importantly what not to say.

 

She keeps in her, his secret tears and his struggles.

 

And it would almost be enough to stay, if he could only keep her. Have her there in the mornings so he would be less lonely.

 

Less alone. And hadn't she said they were different. And now he knew. Understood the vast different in so similar those words.

 

But he could not keep her. Not yet. And not the way he meant. He did not want a wife. Not really. He wanted to carry her with him. To have her hold him, to look at him and know. To love him anyway.

 

There were times of course he thought of more. Of kisses, of fleeting touches that left him embarrassed and ashamed.

 

But the other things felt to far away from him.

 

What had she said. Love you fiercely. She did and so did he.

 

It was a rough kind of love. The kind that could ruin lesser people.

 

He wanted to be the kind of person who could live through.

 

And so he knew what he had to do. He had to leave, to see the world and choose, even if it felt like a chore.

 

He was the head of the household now. He could not take Anne and he could not stay for her.

 

 

  1. **go to lands unknown and void of breath**




 

Telling Anne is hard. He sees the tremble of her lip. But she does not cry. She smiles bites away her sorrow and tells him she will miss him most desperately.

 

It makes his heart thump, her big words and big ideas. Her eyes and the little way she brushes her fingers close to his.

 

He will miss her too. Terribly. Awfully.

 

But he has to see, has to know if all the things he is choosing are the right things.

 

He watches her from the train window, her little gray cap and her sorrowful eyes. “Come home, Someday.”  
  


He nods and watches as she disappears in the distance within the cloud the train leaves behind.

 

It takes him two days to think of her letter again. But he can not pull it out fast enough when the thought comes to him.

 

He traces his name in her delicate script.

 

_'Dear Gilbert,_

 

_I am writing this at night, the moon is very high and is shinning through the white lady that sits at the window. I am writing by the moonlight. I tried to start this to you so many times. But nothing ever seemed right. The words were not the ones I wanted. They seemed too long or too short to say all the things that felt very important. I miss you. It looks so small does it not? So little for a feeling so grand and big. And I want to tell you that I will, I will miss my Gilbert. My wonderful Gil, whom I love and wish to see as often as I can. But those string of words is to small to express that. To little for all the feelings that rumble inside of me when I think of you so far away. But maybe that isn't fair, not to feel but to say to you. I would not keep you close to me if where you should be is somewhere far away._

 

_I must tell you, I must, that I think you are brave. To go so far away, to leave what you know for something that you can not guess. I have spent so much of my life trying to find my way out of the unknown, to find a place that is steady and real, that I think you must be gallant to leave it. To find out what the world holds for you. What you can hold for the world. But then, I am not surprised that you are so brave. Your father spoke so often of your bravery._

 

_Does it hurt you to hear me speak of him? I hope not, I hope that hearing how he loved you, how much he wanted for you, gives you comfort and makes you smile. He told me of you, those times I visited and sat with him while you chopped wood. He would tell me stories of you. His eyes lit up then, and I could imagine, I could really see how he must have been when you were little, before he got sick. In his eyes, in the same eyes as you, they shown strength and kindness._

 

_You have so much of your father in you. I wish I had known him longer. Know you longer to. I wish I had not wasted the time of listening to the other girls. That we had, had those extra months of friendship between us. But it is good now, isn't it, dear friend? To have this, to know each other. How different it could have been, if I had not be a different kind of brave, if I had listen to Josie and the others. If I had kept pretending to be angry with you. Think how long we would have wasted then. To not have the time to hold on to each other as we have now. I think it must be such divine providence to have found you as I did._

 

_I am loosing myself. I wanted to tell you something, something very important. Only I guess I do not know how. It is so strange for me to not have the words. The right ones. Maybe that is why it took so long to write this to you. To tell you everything. How can there be enough words for everything?_

_It is like this, once, months ago, when you were gathering up the wood, your father told me a story. He told me of the tree. The Blythe tree. Our tree. Only your father did not call it that. But I know in my heart it is the one he was speaking of. He told me of how when you were little you would climb that tree, that you could not stop at just a little high, but no spot was good enough for you till you reached branches so thick your father could not see you. He told me he was afraid for you. That he had wanted so much to keep you safe. That he could not bare to lose you. But that each time he opened his mouth to call for you to come back, he could not make himself speak. For you were so happy, to explore, to be so high. You were so unafraid. And he could not stand to make you fearful. So instead, he waited at the bottom, his hands stretched up to you. Just in case you fell. He said you never did. But that he never stopped holding out arms for you either._

 

_I am thinking of that tree, as I write by moonlight, as my own white lady stands for me. It means something don't you think, the words I want to say to you are in there somewhere. I made a promise to myself that I should look out for that tree while you were gone. Even if you do not come back for a long time. That I should make sure it is still standing for you, so that someday, maybe another little Blythe child should be brave and his brave father Gilbert should stand at the bottom holding his own arms out. I want to give that to you._

 

_I want to hold my arms out for you. I want you to be brave and sure and adventurous. I do not want to hold you back. But I want to be here if you should need me. If you should find your way back. Do you understand? Do you see what I am saying even if the words are not right?_

 

_I want you to hold on to our friendship, wherever you are, wherever you find yourself. To know, you are not alone, that you never were, that you could never be. That your father is holding out his arms to you._

 

_That I am, that I am with you wherever you go._

 

_I am with you._

 

_Anne._

 

He turned his face into the hammock to block the tears. Yes, he thought, you are with me. When he calmed himself enough, he carefully folded the letter, his thumb caressing Anne's name, and then placed it close to his heart. As if it could copy the sound of his heartbeat. Yes, he thought again, you will go with me wherever I end up. Wherever I go, you go to.

 

And yes, he thought not for the last time, he would go back. Back to that large Blythe tree and his father's grave. He would go back to Anne and the next time he ventured away he would take her whole self with him. Because somewhere in his minds eye, he saw that little Blythe child climbing the tree. He saw his own arms stretched to the branches and he saw to the side, his Anne-Girl. It would be always the Blythe tree. Their Blythe tree.

 


End file.
